SPY INTERACTIVE

Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000
From: David Burke dburke@whitedot.org
======================================
P R E S S R E L E A S E
======================================

New book exposes Big Brother
technology in the living room

INTERACTIVE TV SPIES ON VIEWERS

Civil liberties groups gathering
in opposition to WebTV, AOL-TV

======================================

THIS SPRING, a new book titled Spy TV exposes the methods by which digital interactive television will observe and manipulate viewers in their homes. The use of neural network software to create "psychographic profiles" and then "modify the behavior" of individuals is frightening, and the list of organizations now opposing this technology is growing.

Interactive television will influence our families and our democracy in dangerous ways. Advertisers interviewed look forward to targeting children individually, over time, and then managing that influence on family purchase decisions.

Repeatedly, broadcasters mentioned environmentalists as the kind of viewers they could target with "customised" messages, thereby dismantling any real consumer power. How will other types of political activity be affected? Any television that can show something different to everyone is a politician's ideal medium.

Whoever controls your interactive TV will be able to spend years of your life just trying different combinations of programming until they find out what makes you do things. And increasingly, that controller will not be human. It will be a computer running artificial intelligence software, capable of learning and adapting. "The ultimate goal," says one consultant, "is to crack human personality in real time."

And when that goal is reached, even if they just come close, how easy will it be to sell each viewer a bottle of shampoo? A government policy? A new form of government? "There is no limit to this technology," says one excited broadcaster, "The limit is only as far as the mind can imagine!"

David Burke agrees. That's how he wrote most of the book:

"Every time I thought of some new way interactive TV could work," he says, "to control viewer behavior, I called up the companies involved and found they were already working on it. The unbelievable thing is: we are actually paying them to do this to us!"

MORE INFO:

http://www.spyinteractive.com
http://www.spyinteractive.com

---